Bayne - Montreal Friday media visit

Ford Racing

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. - No. 6 Fastenal Ford Mustang - visited with members
of the media today following practice at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The
following is a transcript of that press conference.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Photo by: Adriano Manocchia

YOU SAID LAST WEEK
AT WATKINS GLEN THAT YOU NEED TO GET BETTER AT ROAD RACING. “It’s a
tough place for me. I feel like the things I learned last week at
Watkins Glen is definitely helping here then you come to a different
racetrack and it’s different problems for myself. Just getting laps
is good. We made quite a bit of laps there and got better every time we
went out. Obviously we’re still lacking some speed that we need to
run up front but I think we’ve got enough speed to kind of stay in the
top-15 which is kind of our goal here and just minimize our points
damage and get out of here and go on to Bristol.”

HOW MUCH DID YOU
LEARN FROM YOUR ONE RACE HERE LAST YEAR? “One of the things that we
learned is that we were running somewhere in the top-15 and one of our
spotters weren’t quite on top of his game and we came around Turn 5,
the blind corner there, and they were stopped and we got in the wreck.
After that I was just riding around. I noticed that Kenny Wallace was
just riding around, just biding his time and finished 12th. That’s
what we really need to do is we need to finish as high as we can with
the fenders on it. There’s a lot of new guys here running with us and
that kind of throws a stick into things. You don’t know who you’re
racing out there is one of the biggest things so just taking our
time.”

HOW TOUGH IS THE TRACK ON BRAKES? “We’re using ‘em
pretty good. But the brake packages that these guys have come up with
on these cars it seems like they’re almost bulletproof. They work
really good and they worked all practice and obviously the race is a
different story when you’re running ‘em green for a lot of laps. I
don’t think that’s going to be too bit of an issue. Obviously
we’re a couple of seconds off the pace so maybe for some of the
fast guys it might be a little worse [smiles] but for us it seemed to be
okay for practice.”

YOUR TEAMMATES ARE ARRIVING HERE JUST BEFORE FOR
THE START OF THE RACE. IS IT NORMAL FOR THEM TO BE ON THE PHONE WITH
YOU OR IN CONTACT WITH YOU WITH THE NEW NATIONWIDE CAR HERE? “I feel
like they’ll probably talk the guys that are running their cars
‘cause they seem to be pretty decent. Owen Kelly and Billy Johnson
are really good road racers. I’m sure they’re talking to be more
than they’d be talking to me [smiles].”

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING
FORWARD TO AT BRISTOL? WHAT APPEALS TO YOU ABOUT THE RACING THERE?
“It’s just hard racing and I feel like it’s a driver’s
racetrack and we were really fast there the last time. We sat on the
pole and we were the only one that could run with Kyle [Busch] for 160
laps until we made a mistake and got a penalty there on pit road [under
caution]. Just really looking forward to getting back there. I think
we’ve made our cars better since the last time we were there and I
think we’ve got a really good shot at winning that race.” HOW DO

YOU LIKE THIS EVENT AND WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE POSSIBILITY THIS
MIGHT BE THE LAST RACE HERE? “I really enjoy it. For one, all the
fans that show up here. They seem really passionate about racing.
It’s a really cool city to hang out in and like I said when the
fans show up it really makes us drive harder I think. When you’re
driving around the road course and you see people in trees and just
everywhere they can get and I think it’s a cool site to see.
Hopefully we can come back.”

HAVE YOU CAN CARL EDWARDS HAD A
DISCUSSION ABOUT YOUR HISTORY? WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WHEN FROM HIM WHEN
YOU SEE HIM COMING UP BEHIND YOU? “Yeah we’ve talked. We’ve kind
of settled everything out but the biggest thing is he’s probably going
to be coming so fast I’m not really going to have time to worry about
it [smiles]. He runs really good here. Hopefully I can learn a few
things from him the few laps that I’m behind him.” IS THERE ONE

PART OF THE TRACK MORE CHALLENGING THAN ANY OTHER HERE FOR YOU? “For
myself it’s more getting the braking down as good as I can. I feel
like I lose a lot of time under brakes, maybe braking too early or
whatever I need to do different there and there’s a lot of good
braking zones here. So I just need to get better at that and I think it
would help me out a lot.”